Is Global Warming Causing More Tornadoes? Not So Fast, Says Harold Brooks

Is Global Warming Causing More Tornadoes? Not So Fast, Says Harold Brooks

Recently, I witnessed the destructive power of a tornado nearly firsthand. In Norman, Oklahoma on the evening of May 24, I watched the sky darken and unleash a battery of nickel sized hail. Then a funnel cloud twisted down from the clouds, even as the cloud line itself touched earth in the distance, where a tornado had landed. Later, grass and leaves came flying through the air and stuck to our window, debris propelled from miles away.

It was terrifying—and more than that, awe inspiring. But what happened in Oklahoma that day, while very destructive and deadly, was nothing near the death toll in Joplin, Missouri two days earlier, or in Alabama in April, a month that set a new record for tornado outbreaks. So much tornado destruction this year, and so many deaths, has inevitably led some to ask the question—could global warming be implicated here?

Fortunately, being in Norman, I was also in the place to ask one of our country’s top experts this question—Harold Brooks, a tornado specialist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory. Along with other mainstream scientists, Brooks agrees that “it’s abundantly clear that the surface temperature has increased, and will continue to increase, and the overwhelming evidence is that it’s due to human activities.” Brooks also thinks global warming is likely to impact many weather phenomena–increasing the risk of heat waves, for instance, and stronger precipitation events.

“But it doesn’t necessarily mean that every bad weather event is going to get worse,” Brooks continues, and when it comes to tornadoes, “I get really worried when people oversell the case.” After all, if we’re wrong and we go through a series of quiet tornado years in the coming years, it will be just another weapon with which to attack those who want climate action.

Why isn’t Brooks convinced that tornadoes are getting more numerous due to climate change? In short, it’s because the numbers of tornadic outbreaks don’t simply follow the temperature–meaning the problem is much more complicated. “Maximum tornado occurrence doesn’t happen during the summer time, but well before,” Brooks explains, “and the hottest years haven’t seen the most tornadoes.”

Indeed, neither the theory, nor the data, provide enough support at this point to claim that tornadoes should increase in number in a warming world.

Let’s cover theory first: Tornado formation is greatly enhanced by two key atmospheric parameters: convective available potential energy (or CAPE), which is a measure of atmospheric instability, and wind shear, which imparts rotation. (For more explanation, see here.) So one way of examining what will happen to tornadoes in a warming world is to examine how these variables are expected to change.

The answer, according to Brooks, is that it’s mixed—CAPE is expected to go up, but shear moves in the opposite direction. (One paper finding this result is Trapp et al, 2009.) “Physically the most important thing for the tornado problem is the wind shear, and the models predict it should decrease for a warming planet,” Brooks explains.

In addition to models, there’s the data on tornado occurrence over time. Here again, Brooks doesn’t see a trend related to rising temperatures. “When you look at the big years in the US, it’s the early 1970s for tornadoes,” he says. “That’s the coldest period in the US, and for a long time.” Even in the very warm 2000s, we saw some quiet years for tornadoes. “If I was going to expect to see an association with global warming, I would certainly expect the 2000s to have many more big years than the 1970s,” Brooks says.

None of this means we shouldn’t worry about global warming, or its weather impacts. And we definitely need to be ever vigilant in tornado prediction and emergency communication to the public. It’s just to say that when it comes to climate change, not every change in every weather phenomena is necessarily a worsening–or easily predictable or measurable. There are many, many things to worry about in a warming world, but at least at this point, it seems we should be cautious about including an increase in tornado activity on that list.

Harold Brooks is allowed to speak on the subject because he gave his loyalty oath: “Brooks agrees that ‘it’s abundantly clear that the surface temperature has increased, and will continue to increase, and the overwhelming evidence is that it’s due to human activities.’”

I bet you didn’t get far at school, the teachers kept hearing from you “Oh, yeah? ‘A is for Apple’, is it? You’ve just given a loyalty oath that A is the first letter of Apple so as to brainwash us kids!!!!”.

For crying out loud. Do you not realize that name-calling only makes you look like an insecure teenager? No one who is confident in their views would do that. Thinking people on your side of an issue must cringe. It makes the AGW supporters look like a gang of rowdy but loyal soccer fans instead of thinking individuals.

The AGW-skeptic disagreement is fundamentally about numbers. When numbers one person sees as unsupportable are cherished by another, it can be instructive to explore motivations. But even then the goal should be understanding the difference in motives, not silencing the opposition.

You’re a raving lunatic. No matter than you desperately want to beleive you’re an “everyman” (as evidenced by your insistence that everyone uses “faith” to decide issues when it’s patently obvious that the only reasoning you apply to your position is faith only).

But you don’t like to have the mirror of truth shown up to you. You’re not an everyman. You’re not the “reasonable middle ground”. YOUARETHEFRUITCAKE.

The liar.

The misanthropic speck of flyshit on the dinnerplate of humanity.

It would be teenager of me to be afraid to tell you and everyone the truth about you just because you want to paint it as something adolescent.

It’s only the adolescents who so desperately want to be seen as grown-ups. Adults have enough backbone to ignore the petulant whinings of the lunatic fringe.

As long as you lie, as long as you crap all over the planet and as long as you continue to put yourself ahead of every single other being on this planet, I’ll call you out on it.

Period. Nobody can prove the storms of 2011 were made worse by climate change.
Nobody can prove the fires in Texas and Russia were the result of global warming.
Nor can anyone prove the heavy rains and floods of 2010 and 2011 were due to CO2 induced climate change.

Perhaps nobody will ever be able to prove it. So as the death toll rises, the crops drown or wither and our planet gets more and more inhospitable, we can all breath a sign of relief. We can’t pin it on Climate Change.

The number of weather-related disasters reported each year in the world’s poorest countries has more than trebled since the 1980s and the increase cannot be explained by better reporting or an increase in population, a study by Oxfam has found.

An analysis of the natural disasters reported to international relief agencies since 1980 has revealed that while the number of disasters relating to geophysical events – such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions – remained fairly constant, disasters caused by flooding and storms significantly increased. Oxfam looked at disasters in more than 140 countries and found a clear increase over time, rising from 133 disasters a year in 1980 to more than 350 a year in recent years. Steve Jennings, the report’s author, believes the increase could be the result of climate change.

When you throw waste out into the streets, air or rivers, that’s called “polluting the environment”.

However, libertards, all for THEIROWNFREEDOM and hang anyone else’s, see the censure against poisoning the environment (and therefore mutualising the cost of cleaning up whilst privatising the profit of being dirty) as an infringement of their liberties.

‘course when your dog shits on their lawn, they’re the first ones to call the police…

Safe level of CO2 for extended living is 5000ppm.
8000 ppm is safe for periods of a week or two.
An ideal level for Planet earth would be 1000 to 1500 ppm.
The average CO2 level over the past 600 million years was 1250 ppm..

Don’t think fossil fuels will do the trick to get it that high. You’d need to increase the temperature of the ocean CO2 reservoir to shift the equilibrium vapor pressure. But that would mean dreaded warming.

Who was it that wondered: if the environmentalists had a thermostat and could control the earth’s temperature, what temperature would they pick? Could they pick one at all?
Do they know what they want?
Or do they just know what they don’t want?
Or does what they want have nothing to do with temperature?

You see, the way it happens is that a charged particle will strip electrons off some atoms in a gas it passes through. These charged particles will attract polar molecules (such as H2O). In a super-saturated environment, this will accrete more water and eventually (if there’s enough water vapour to stop the droplet evaporating), become visible. The charged particle continues and makes more charged molecules and so you can see the trail of the charged particle as a trail of droplets of water.

But as we’ve seen, you don’t actually read anything to inform your opinions, you just jump straight into having one, so maybe you read that this paper “destroys” AGW and just jumped straight into “this must be new”.

And my point was that as soon as research was published on cloud formation mechanisms, the AGW apologists would begin hand-waving denials. And here they are, right on cue.

The fact that cloud chambers already existed is so far off the point as to be laughable. No one had ever quantified the effect of various particles on the atmosphere. Much more research will be done, unless you all succeed in suppressing it. It can then be included in the vaunted models. If you’re an honest scientist, you don’t desist improving the model because it gives you the result you want. Do you see the AGW people saying “Great, more data to help us refine our models! Thanks!” That’s what good scientists would say.

So you are of the opinion that this paper is really just saying “here’s a better way to model GCR-produced clouds” and that this is, in your words, “really big” at the same time?

Well, lets have a look at the paper itself, shall we?

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL047036.shtml
===
We have studied sulfuric acid aerosol nucleation in an atmospheric pressure reaction chamber using a 580 MeV electron beam to ionize the volume of the reaction chamber. We find a clear contribution from ion-induced nucleation and consider this to be the first unambiguous observation of the ion-effect on aerosol nucleation using a particle beam under conditions that resemble the Earth’s atmosphere. By comparison with ionization using a gamma source we further show that the nature of the ionizing particles is not important for the ion-induced component of the nucleation. This implies that inexpensive ionization sources - as opposed to expensive accelerator beams - can be used for investigations of ion-induced nucleation.
===

So let’s have a look at that last sentence again, the “take home” message:

“This implies that inexpensive ionization sources - as opposed to expensive accelerator beams - can be used for investigations of ion-induced nucleation.”

Tell me, where did you get your opinion of what this paper was about when you described it as something useful for climate science, given that we don’t use expensive accelerator beams to modify the climate.

Where is your source?

It can’t be the paper.

So where did you get your opinion? You say you form them yourself by reading the actual facts, but the actual facts in this case do not support your conclusion.

Note how applesauce has not answered anything but, having being given some skeptical questions about this hypothesis in the face of known elements (anyone who has washed their car knows about dust being a huge aftereffect of rainfall).

Yet, despite styling itself as “skeptical”, shows no sign of anything approaching skepticism. Not even (as it insists should have been done in the case of this paper under their mischaracterisation of the paper’s utility) with “that’s interesting, maybe that ought to be included in their theory”.

Again this is obstinacy, not skepticism: applesauce is ALWAYSRIGHT and AGWALWAYSWRONG. Anything that supports applesauce’s preconceptions MUST be accepted uncritically. Anything that goes against applesauce’s preconceptions must have been wrong.

Safe limits for working is 1000ppm, so you’re out by a factor of 5 there. And indoors the CO2 concentration is higher because you are in it and there’s nowhere near the level of airflow as there is in the blue room.

the stats come from the Navy, NASA, the government and the Mining industry.
The average CO2 level in well ventilated buildings is around 1000.
In mines it routinely goes to 5000 and on Space stations, 5000 is considered safe for long duration and 8000 for short. (weeks)\
Again, Dont take my word, go look it up.
390 ppm is in fact dangerously low and barly adequate to sustain life.

1500 would be far preferable.
And since its insulating value decreases exponentially as its density increases, that concentration would not increase temperatures enough to even offset the cooling we will get in the next 20 years from the real climate driver; the sun.

Aside from the fact that this is all way off topic, you are both wrong, which you must know since the correct information is readily available online. 390 ppm is hardly “dangerously low” since Earth vegetation has done just fine with this amount of CO2 (and less) for quite some time.

Secondly, that 1000 ppm is toxic is absurd. 1000 ppm is typical indoors. 10,000 ppm is fine for 8 hours, and 30,000 is okay for 15-30 minutes. The actual limits vary between different regulating authorities, but nowhere is 1000 ppm considered toxic.

FYI - Very high concentrations (e.g. >100,000 ppm or so) are a little painful … stick your head in a dry ice chest and take a deep breath sometime.

“…Due to a moderate La Niña, the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season was well above average, with the most number of named storms since 2005. The 2010 Atlantic season ties with the 1995 Atlantic hurricane season and the 1887 Atlantic hurricane season for the third largest number of named storms, with 19, and it also ties with the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season for the second largest number of hurricanes, with 12.[2] In addition, the activity in the north Atlantic in 2010 exceeded the activity in the northwest Pacific Typhoon season. The only other known time this event happened was in 2005.[3]…”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Atlantic_hurricane_season

And the comment about the level of CO2 is irrelevent.

Like it or not. the US is just a part of the world, not the whole world.

It is more important for scientists to be accurate than for them to provide talking points for arguments about climate change.

Tornadoes have complicated causes. Dr. Brooks finds that some record tornado seasons have happened in cooler years, so that means a warmer temperature is not the most important factor in causing tornadoes.

I think they are still working on learning how tornadoes work, so maybe they do not yet have a complete explanation for why a record-breaking tornado would occur at any particular time.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.